Virtual Visits is a digital series where Frye staff check in on members of our creative community in their home and work spaces during social distancing and beyond.
Join Negarra Kudumu, Manager of Public Programs at the Frye Art Museum, for a Virtual Visit with Manuel Piña.
Manuel Piña graduated as a mechanical engineer in Vladimir, Russia in 1983 and started artistic practice in early 1990s.
Current technological and economic conditions make possible today’s unprecedented proliferation of image-making devices and of new, equally powerful means for their dissemination. The result is an unparalleled production and distribution of digital still and video images. Mostly of vernacular character, such images convey uncompromising explorations of these mediums. The scale of this phenomenon signals a paradigm shift in the way images are conceived, consumed and understood, and indicates the emergence of new visual languages.
This shift confronts us with a central question: what is an image today?
Piña's artistic research is concerned with this question and the potentials of such emerging languages to reflect on and shape our contemporary human experience. His teaching aims to investigate artistic forms emerging from our current conditions and the changes in the social role of images.
Piña's work has been exhibited in the Americas and Europe including the Havana Biennale; the Istanbul Biennale; Kunsthalle Vienna; Grey Gallery, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; DAROS Museum, Zurich. Piña is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of Britsh Columbia.
See more of Piña’s work and learn more about his current project.